Twitch streamer xQc took part in the Place social experiment on April Fools’ Day 2022 and claims to have received more death threats this April than in the past six years combined.
Many streamers and casual Redditors joined together to take part in a collaborative social experiment hosted on Reddit called Place. For xQc, the social experiment became one of the streamer’s most popular streams, breaking a Twitch Peak Viewership Record.
However, the experiment took a virulent turn following xQc’s call to target My Little Pony fans as their pixelated artwork of Rainbow Dash turned into multiple black dots in a matter of seconds.
“I have gotten more death threats in an hour than I have gotten in the past six years combined from changing pixels from one color to another on a corporate website that makes your f**king lights flash on your monitor,” xQc claimed during yesterday’s stream before continuing. “Imagine if you took this much care and this much action in your life in other things that mattered like making something of yourself rather than participating in cold, angry violence because some f**king colors changed. That is f**king illness.”
The Place experiment is centered around an online canvas on Reddit that people can edit by changing singular color pixels. Though, once that pixel is changed, there is a waiting period of five to 20 minutes before that singular pixel can be changed once again.
An event that first took place on April Fools’ Day 2017, the social experiment was revived this past April Fools’ Day 2022 and was meant to be a fun communal activity. Though, it appears the project has major flaws that counteract the initial good intentions of the event.
This is not the first time xQc has run into issues surrounding death threats. In late-2020, he threatened to ban viewers who posted offensive messages in other streamers’ chats. As a result, he has stopped hosting other streamers to mitigate these threats and hateful messages.
Though, it appears that this hate has escalated to a new level of notoriety.
